As the price of oil continued its nosedive to levels last seen more than a decade ago, the oil and gas world continued to bear the brunt of swingeing cuts and plunging profits. The sector is in the worst slump for forty years: the days of $140 a barrel are ancient history.

There is hurricane on the horizon, and those in the asset integrity field are being tasked with steering a sinking ship through the storm. We assembled a room full of seasoned operational excellence (OE) professionals and quizzed them on how to go about making ends meet with in tough times through with an operational excellence approach. The following article highlights their thoughts….

The dip in oil prices of more than 70 per cent in the past 18 months has put palpable strain on oil and gas companies to make ends meet while still maintaining standards in productivity and safety.

In this interview, we speak with the former commanding office of a US Navy Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine about how the unwritten skills he learned in his years of military service can be perfectly applied to create a high reliability organisation in the business world.

Given the current oil price downturn, hydrocarbons companies across the globe are under more pressure to perform with less resource and shrinking workforces.

This is where organisational effectiveness can play a starring role part, in terms of managing structure, change and communication to the grassroots of an organisation, as well as consistency and efficacy of decision making.

In this interview, we speak with a veteran of organisational effectiveness in the petrochemical industries about the way organisational effectiveness has changed one of the world’s largest